The newspaper was first made by John and Henry Cooke. They also had a merchant business called Francis Cooke and Co.. They said they would use the newspaper to help miners in the Australian Gold Rush.[3] The newspaper has become very popular since then. According to its website, it gets up to 957,000 on Saturdays.[2] The editor is Andrew Jaspan, who got the job in 2004.[4] He got in trouble in 2008 when The Agejournalists agreed that he had been making it hard for them to make news reports independently.[5]